An Inefficient model: An Effective PD

When implementing any kind of technology, professional development is key to its success.  What is the point of purchasing a computer if you don't learn how to use it?  Most technology projects that fail, fail because of a lack of professional development.  I have spoken to many educators and technology people over the years and I have heard this same story over and over.  People talk about how their school or district purchased a smart board for every classroom, but no one knows how to use it.  Every teacher got a laptop, but didn't get any training so it is only used for typing letters, internet and email.  Every time I hear a story like this I am frustrated and saddened.  Look at it this way.

Let's say you have a teen aged child.  It's time for that child to learn how to drive, but instead of signing the child up for Drivers Education or taking him/her out with you to learn how to drive, you just buy them a new car.  That's it....you buy the car, give them the keys and say "you are on own" or "let me know if you need any advice".  Who in their right mind would do this?  When in comes to using technology in the schools, we do it all the time.  Schools or districts purchase equipment so they can show they are using technology (or with the goal of truly integrating technology into the classroom), but don't supply professional development.  Some schools give a little bit of training on the hardware and stop there.  Some districts have Technology Coaches, but a single Technology Coach for 100 educators is simply paying lip service to a serious flaw in our current educational model.

Let me clarify one thought.  Professional development is not training.  They are not the same thing and should not be approached the same way.  When someone receives new technology equipment, they need some training to learn how to use it.  When an educator receives new equipment, they need training on how to use it, THEN they need professional development to learn how to use it in the classroom.  They need to be able to explore the technology within the confines of their curriculum and they need to be able to speak with someone about their ideas who can speak back and help the educator explore the possibilities.  Without this step, technology integration into the classroom will never reach it's full potential.  Training is easy to understand.  Training has clear and observable goals that can be seen right away.  Training can be done through simple tutorials via video or text documents.  Training, if organized well, is efficient.  Effective professional development is not.

Professional development is that extra step educators need to help them use classroom technology in the best possible way.  It can be obtained through the many wonderful conferences that are available (see this page on my website for a list) and many schools and districts offer mini conferences during the beginning of the school year.  They are good ways to encourage educators to use technology and experiment with it's limits, but is simply isn't enough.  Technology is changing very quickly and we have to keep up or get left behind.  I am not talking about "Keeping up with the Jones", I am talking about using the best modern tools to facilitate teaching and learning.  I am talking about knowing and understanding which tools are best suited for a task and leaving behind old technologies when appropriate.  I am talking about understanding the myriad of tools available and having the ability to filter through them in order to find the most appropriate one for your situation.  This kind of understanding can come through conferences, but a truly thorough understanding of a technology and how it can be used in the classroom comes from high quality professional development.

At the school where I work, I have made some serious changes to technology professional development.  The first thing I did was to move my personal vacation time.  Every year I get three weeks of vacation (plus the week of July 4 which is a mandatory week off).  Instead of pretending to take my time off in July (when I end up working half of it anyway) I take my time off during the school year.  During the summer, educators are invited to work with me directly for up to three days as individuals or in small groups (I limit these groups to three or four).  I work with these educators and their curricula.  I don't "train them" even if we start with a little bit of training.  I help them explore the technology and how it relates to their classroom.  My results are sometimes not what I expected.  For example:  I was working with a couple of educators on the concept of digital portfolios.  The original plan was for me to teach the basics of creating a Google Site and helping them to create a template for their students to use.  This evolved into using iPads to document work and share files.  We explored various online storage options and found a system that would work well with their specific age group and their classroom environment.    The iPad discussion led to a variety of apps that could be used to teach math and explore information.  This led to their desire to learn how to use iMovie and Comic Life on the iPad.  Which lead to... and the list continues. We did accomplish creating the digital portfolio template and planning how digital portfolios would be implemented.  We did accomplish how to use the iPads to document information and share files (I'm talking the kids doing this as well as the adults).  We did accomplish finding apps to help teach Math and all of what we accomplished is now being smoothly (for the most part) implemented into the classrooms (grades 2,3,4).  So in a total of 6 days over the summer we have made an enormous change in their classrooms and students as young as 8 years old are creating their own digital portfolios and truly reflecting on their own learning.  How cool is that!?

Let's take that same situation and place it into a more traditional model of professional development.  Let's also use the six educators referred to above.  So I have six educators who are interested in having students create and use digital portfolios.  They discuss their idea with me and I ask for some training during the week educators come back in August and are given some training.  I argue with administration to separate these educators out from the rest of the staff.  I struggle with the schedule to find the best time to help them learn how to use Google Sites and at best I get to work with the whole group of 6 for up to 3 hours (at absolute best).  In that three hours I teach them how to use Google Sites and discuss how they can implement the concept into their classrooms.  That's all, I'm done and since it's the beginning of the school year, I may not be able to approach them again about this project until late September.  At best 2 of them will have implemented the project.  They get frustrated because things didn't work as smoothly as expected (we didn't have enough time to plan and discuss how to implement).  They get frustrated because they don't remember how to do some stuff in Google Sites (they didn't get enough practice).  The students get frustrated because the teacher can't help them (the teachers didn't get enough "play time" and we didn't plan out the student training portion of the idea.  In short, we have spotty success at best.  Does this sound familiar?

If we want technology to be truly and fully integrated into the modern classroom, we MUST provide quality professional development.  The money we save by not having teachers receive this experience is paid by student learning and success.  

Just-in-time Training

When working with a 1:1 mobile device program at any school there are certain things that have to be considered, and certain things that absolutely must be available to students and staff.  The first is technical support.  If technology doesn't run smoothly in the classroom, there is a larger chance they will simply stop using it.  The second is training and understanding how to do certain things.  I work for a small school and for everything we do with technology (and we do a lot), there are only two of us in my entire department.  My helper is in charge of technical support and I cover everything else.  It isn't possible to do everything that needs to be done, but it is possible to provide tools where educators and students can help themselves.

We have provided a wide variety of tools to our students and it is my responsibility that the students and educators know how to use those tools.  I have provided training over the summer for staff and I have actively been inside the classrooms, but that will never be enough.  My people (and probably most educators and students using technology) need high quality Just-in-time Training.  They need access to tutorials (written and/or video) on how to do the specific tasks they need to do.  There are many wonderful sources for technology tutorials online.  Video tutorial sites such as Lynda.com are wonderful for professionals.  Teachers and students however, tend to need training that is a little more specific.  They need a video or written tutorial that explains to them how to get from their point A to their point B.  For exampe: Let's assume that a child is working on a project using Google Apps.  They need to insert a specific table into a document, but have no idea how to do it.  Let's also say that I am not available to help them.  They could spend time searching for tutorials on how to accomplish this.  They could find information and mentally adjust it to their situation (maybe), but this type of thing takes time, especially if they lack experience with Google Docs.  Here's my solution:

If I know students (or educators) are going to do something that may be difficult for them, I will usually make a quick video tutorial or (upon request) a written tutorial on how to do a very specific task.  This way the learner does not need to go hunting for help and I know they will have help from their own individual starting point to their own individual ending point.  For example: A group of students or teachers need to connect a printer to their iPad.  There are tutorials on generally doing this, but they will be more successful if I take the 5 minutes to make a quick video tutorial (ipad screen casting resouces listed below) showing them how using their app and our printers.  Also, this way they can hear my voice and we know each others idosyncricies.  They are all more likely to understand what I am saying, even if a complete stranger uses the same words.  I also know exactly what the student/teacher heard and can adjust any trainings as necessary to improve student/teacher learning.  This is not something any third party can do.

Another version of Just-in-time Training that is important for technology integration success is having someone in the classroom to offer advice when needed.  Of course, it would be impossible to be in every classroom every day, but classroom observations could help.  Providing regular visitations to classrooms in order to observe and offer ideas can provide an amazing amount of help to staff and students.  Instructional Technologists must be given the time and encouragement to go into classrooms and provide another point of view.  Classroom teachers must be given the time and encouragement to allow someone to come into their classroom, in a non judgemental fashion, and give them another point of view.  This is a collaborative approach, not an evaluative one.  This is not about teacher performance or evaluation, it is about student learning and engagement.

If you find yourself in a situation where your school or district is interested in integrating technology into your classrooms and curriculum, encourage them to deeply consider the important of professional development for teachers.  Too many schools and districts have purchased large amounts of technology equipment only to have it sit in a room or unused in a classroom simply because they did not provide the necessary professional development.  Equipment alone is simply equipment.  Equipment plus training equals potential.  For an example of the effects of professional development on integrating technology, see my post titled "The Importance of Professional Development".

If you are an administrator and would like help teaching teachers how to use and integrate technology, please feel free to email me at randy@technologyskills.net or you can contact me through my website at technologyskills.net

A note about screen casting on the iPad:  I am not aware of any app that allows you to screencast directly from the iPad, however there is a nice work around.  I use AirServer to project my iPad onto my computer screen and then Camtasia for Mac in order to record what I am doing.  This allows me to make quick and easy video tutorials on doing different things on the iPad.  Some of my tutorials are listed on my website. If you don't want to play for a screencast software, Screencast-O-Matic and Jing are both nice alternatives.

Taking Concepts for Granted

So far my fifth grade teachers and myself have worked very hard to create this new blended learning environment where students are competent  in creating, manipulating and understanding digital files.  To date, the kids have done some amazing stuff with their journaling app (PaperDesk) and their pdf annotator (DocAS).  They have done so well and understand digital learning environments enough that we have decided to move into "phase 2".  Of course, we aren't quite sure what phase 2 is yet, but we do know that it involves teaching these students some modern digital concepts that we sometimes take for granted.

Many times over the years I have heard educators or technology people say that the teacher didn't need to know the technology as well as the students, the teacher needed to know how to guide students.  I used to make this statement myself.  I am beginning to think that this was partially a mistake.  Maybe we have taken this concept to a point where we do not feel responsible for teaching our students some basic modern skills.  We take time out of our days to teach students how to do things like organize their locker, organize their binder or organize a paper, but we don't take the time  to teach them how to organize themselves in a modern way.  If you were write down all of the resources available to students today, the list would be staggering.  We are using all of these resources in schools, but instead of teaching the students how to organize their digital lives, we essentially allow them to "stuff it in the closet".  This is unacceptable and we need a solution.

This discussion with my fifth grade staff started because of an email.  We provided our students with email and just assumed they would know how to use it.  We talked about being polite, but not how to double check email addresses, using the CC feature or organizing their inbox.  We hadn't even considered teaching them how to use email signatures or the more "adult" features of email.  On the one hand, the kids did know how to use email, even those who had never used it before were taught in seconds by their peers.  But...

I had a parent come to me complaining about a grade her child received.  The child was to email the teacher, but the teacher said that the email never arrived so the child got a 0.  I explained that the child probably had mistyped the teachers email address (which I had just spoken to the students about a few day previous) and at this point there was no leniency on that issue, but to double check my guess I would like to see his email.  This is when I realized our mistake.  This child, this 10 year old child, had been deleting his sent email right after sending them because he wanted to keep his email organized.  He had been deleting emails from his inbox after reading them (including instructions from teachers) because he wanted to keep his inbox clean.  We taught this child how to send and receive messages, but we didn't really teach him how to effectively use email.

This has been troubling me ever since I realized what was going on.  I approached the fifth grade educators about my "phase 2" idea and will now be meeting regularly.  Our first order of business is to teach students how to effectively use email.  How to make decisions on what to delete and what to keep.  How to make folders and sub folders so information can stay organized and how to search their email to find information they need.  These are basic 21st century concepts and they are just as important as organizing their binders, lockers or anything else in their lives.  As adults, it is our responsibility to understand these basic concepts as well, just as we would understand they other types of organization.  It is our responsibility to know enough about these concepts that we can instantly offer suggestions to students without having to stop and think about it or having to ask someone else "Is it possible to make folders in email?".

They are the digital natives, but we are the guides.  We are not absolved of our responsibility to join the 21st century.  It is not ok to sit back and allow the students to learn new technologies in our classroom without learning that technology ourselves.  In order to be good educators, we must be good learners.  I think that is the main difference between and educator and a teacher.  A teacher helps students learn a specific subject.  An educator helps students prepare for life.  Which one are you?

Below are some resources for students and the 21st century.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills
National Education Technology Standards for Students
The Center for Public Education

The Importance of Professional Development

Mobile learning is a huge topic in education today. Some people want to run to it and others want to run away. I don't usually get on band wagons, but I did get on this one. I had been waiting for something like the iPad for years before it was released. I had seen the potential and benefit of cell phones in the classroom, but they didn't have quite enough features and those screens were just too small....then came the iPad.

The iPad changed how we view education and truly revolutionized the possibility of the learning environment. The cost of the iPads made schools rethink computers in education and suddenly everyone is purchasing iPads for their schools, but many of them are missing the point. One day I was driving down the road and I noticed a sign in front of a school that read "This fall each child will receive an iPad." And I thought, so what? Tell me something important, like what are you going to do with those iPads? Although the right equipment is important, the pedagogy behind how we use the technology in our classrooms is much more so.

Studies have shown that purchasing equipment for classrooms, but not providing the proper professional development is a great way to ensure the program fails. No amount of computers, smart boards, iPads or classroom performance systems in the world will change the classroom if the educators don't have certain things in place. The first is educator buy-in. Successful technology integration cannot be forced on people, but people can be persuaded to try certain things and hopefully that will make the difference. Consider this scenario:

I was working with a group of educators in using the iPad in the classroom. As a part of this training, I had them creating comics in Comic LIfe, a video using iMovie and a video using Explain Everything. One of the educators in this group fought me every inch of the way through this process. She didn't want to make a video (in either iMovie or Explain Everything) and luke warm to the idea of Comic Life. After a lot of gentle nudging I finally got her to create a video on classroom expectations. I doubt this educator will ever make another video, but now that she has had this experience, her students are allowed to create videos using iMovie or Explain Everything or comic using the Comic Life iPad app for class projects. They have never had this option before.

Let's compare this to another group of educators. Another group of educators were implementing a 1:1 iPad program and only accepted two hours of training. They wanted their technology trainer to show them how to use a couple of apps and then they wanted a small amount of training to show the students a couple of apps and that was all. To my knowledge, this group of educators and students are struggling with the iPads and how they can change the classroom. They don't have the base knowledge necessary to smoothly use this technology in their classrooms and have have no vision for what a truly modern classroom should look like. They struggle with simple tasks such as digitally sharing files and cloud storage, not to mention web 2.0 tools.

Compare this scenario to the group mentioned previously. The students of the first set of educators (younger than the second set) can create pdf documents, manipulate files and create comics and videos as well as move files around online and use email with ease. Although they can print, they have done so on rare occasions since they have felt it was unnecessary to print papers to turn in when you can simply use Google Drive to turn in papers digitally.

There is no fundamental difference between the two group of educators or their teaching situations. There were people in both groups who were not thrilled to start a new adventure and who needed to see the benefit of infusing technology into the classroom before being willing to look at things with new eyes. The largest difference is the time allotted to each group. Four days vs. two hours. A group of ten year olds who can manipulate, create and communicate easily using the iPad versus a group of fourteen year old students who get frustrated and cannot seem to figure out what to do.

So what is the cost of a four day staff training compared to two hours? The cost is student learning. The cost is the ability to provide a high quality modern educational environment for students. The cost is the ability of educators to understand the possibilities of effectively using technology in the classroom. The cost of not providing an adequate amount of professional development is simply too high.

I would love to hear stories about your experience with teacher professional development. What has worked, what has not? Please feel free to post to this blog or send me an email to randy@technologyskills.net

iPads in the Electives Classrooms

Many times, when there is a new implementation of technology or a new way of thinking, people usually consider core subject educators.  They don't often consider the non-core subject educator, especially when it comes to funding.  When I taught music in a public elementary school, I was very fortunate to work with a principal that saw the potential of the arts and recognized how the non-core educators could help his school reach its potential.  He made sure that music, art and physical education educators were considered in any school plan and he listened to our opinions as strongly as he listened to the opinions of core subject educators.  Since I have left the music classroom and entered the world of education technology, I have attempt to take the same approach.

When my school decided to implement a 1:1 iPad program, I immediately considered the music and art educators.  I knew they could do amazing things with iPads, but I also knew they had a different way of looking at the world.  They would need a different type of support and a different type of professional development.  There were several things to consider in this approach, and which apps to use was the least of it.  I had to consider how technology could enhance their respective subjects and how I could help them manage classroom behavior in a way that having the physical equipment in the room would not get in the way or become distracting to the students.  I also had to find a way to integrate the arts into our classroom management system that allowed them to participate in digital learning without them feeling like they were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.  The solution was simple.  Patience, patience and more patience.

First let's talk about the professional development.  The electives educators were encouraged to go to the introductory training given to all of the core educators.  After the initial training (how to use the iPad, find and request apps, share files etc....) they were given the option of staying to learn more, or going off to experiment on their own and working with me directly at a later date.  They chose the latter and that's what we did.  I worked with the art teacher in using a variety of apps and using her Apple TV to project her iPad to the front of the room.  I then encouraged her to record videos of herself completing class warmups (using the app Explain Everything) and posting them online to share with students and parents. That involved learning how to use the schools classroom management system.

Classroom management systems are built with a set of tools such as discussion boards, file sharing, quiz modules and grade books.  These all fit well within the confines of a traditional classroom, but not necessarily in a forward thinking arts program.  The trick was to use the tools that were a natural fit to the arts, encourage the arts educators to be open minded to new ideas on some tools and ignore other tools that are simply inappropriate to an art program.  To date, my art and music people are using file sharing, links (to youtube videos) and discussion boards.  They are using a variety of apps on the iPads as well.

In music, students are using audio recording, a digital metronome and Garage Band to compose music. The art teacher is using apps like Brushes and Doodle Buddy for two dimensional drawing and Cast Drawing and 123D Sculpt for three dimensional drawing, and it doesn't stop there.   She uses a variety of other apps such as National Geographic in order to allow students to experience photography.  The last time I walked into her room, she had the fifth grade students looking at an image on their iPad (from National Geographic) and recreating that image using nothing but a black ink pen.  I'm no art critic (I can barely draw a stick figure) but those students were doing some really neat stuff!


For your further reading, here are some interesting website about the iPad and the arts.

http://kentwired.com/school-of-art-launches-ipad-initiative/
http://blog.cia.edu/digitalcanvas/2012/02/28/ipad-art-education-not-just-college-anymore/
http://theteachingpalette.com/2012/02/24/theres-an-app-for-that-ipads-in-the-art-room/